Skins: the wild bunch

To the horror of parents and the delight of just about everyone else, the TV drama Skins blew the lid off what untamed teenagers get up to when let off the leash. With the second series due, Cassandra Jardine went behind the scenes to meet the show's surprisingly sensible cast and its frighteningly young writers. If you don't want to know the score, look away now…

The average age for losing virginity is 13. That's what my 18-year-old son's friends make out. Gulp, I thought, when he told me, looking at my daughter of that age. And I had been worrying about her spending too much time plucking her eyebrows.

Boasting and exaggeration apart, teenagers have always got up to much more than parents know about and, mostly, ignorance is bliss. It prevents us being either shocked or consumed by envy. But, for the past year, there has been no excuse for innocence, not since Skins was broadcast - a series with the unique claim to authenticity of being written, and acted, by teenagers.

The opening shot set an eyebrow-raising tone: it showed a teenage boy in bed with a naked man and woman - his bedmates were only printed on his duvet cover, but it took a while for that realisation to dawn. From then on, through nine episodes, this bunch of middle-class Year 12s at a Bristol sixth-form college could be seen masturbating, trashing houses, throwing up (either because of drink or eating disorders), having it off with teachers, and getting into revenge dramas with drug dealers.

This was neither the gleaming-teeth sanitised version of teenagerdom conveyed by American prime-time shows such as The OC, nor the downbeat documentary view that suggests all teenagers are gun-carrying crack addicts living on rundown estates. Skins was a new idea for young people who don't like to be treated like kids: an f-word-laden comedy drama shown after the watershed when its target audience of under-18s is supposedly in bed, with a book rather than (as in Skins) the psychology teacher. Ironically, the cast - led by About a Boy star Nicholas Hoult - were mostly too young to attend the cast parties without chaperones, yet they could portray on screen acts that made watching with mother a red-faced affair.

Predictably, there was outrage. 'The characters are so drug-addled, sex-obsessed and vacuous that most parents would consider them a parody of modern youth,' harrumphed one reviewer, while advocates of grittiness questioned why some of the 'OK, yah, totally' characters sounded posher than Prince William. Yet despite/because of the criticism Skins took off. The first episode was watched by 1.6 million, then a record audience for Channel 4's fledgling offshoot E4.

Seventy-five thousand signed up as 'friends' of Skins on MySpace; extra shorts were eagerly watched on the internet; thousands applied online to attend a Skins party and, last Easter, some unlucky parents in Durham were landed with a bill for £20,000 worth of damage after their house became the venue for an unofficial Skins party. Their daughter said someone hacked into her MySpace account.

More surprisingly, the series found an audience outside its teenage target. The adults in the show are an unattractive, libidinous, grumpy bunch - Harry Enfield makes a devastating control-freak dad - but it became a weekly must-see for parents seeking insights. I was among them. Curiosity became addiction when Skins turned out not to be a mindless shockfest, but funny, clever and often moving. It conveyed how complicated, not to say agonising, it is being a teenager, but also what fun.

As such, it also found favour with twenty- and thirtysomethings who enjoyed a reminder of their not-so-distant past. There was someone for everybody to identify with or cringe over among the group of friends, led by alpha-male Tony (Hoult): Sid, his shy beanie-wearing sidekick; Chris, the party animal; Michelle, Tony's alpha-female girlfriend; Jal, the clarinet-playing swot; Cassie, the angel-faced anorexic; Maxxie, the gay dancer; and Anwar, the second-generation Muslim. Now this engaging but troubled crew are back for a second series, and aficionados will soon learn whether the good-looking but arrogant Tony survived the car crash that concluded the last episode.

Some things must remain secret, but Hoult looks thoroughly alive when I visit the Bristol warehouse where filming takes place. The lanky, owl-browed 18-year-old, who already has a long list of credits to his name - recently the films Kidulthood and Wah-Wah - is lying on a bed, having a nightmare for one of the mini-episodes made for the Skins website. (The idea is not just to reflect teens but to address them through their favourite medium.)

It's early December, the last day of filming after a six-month stint and the mood is one of heightened emotion. With the exception of Hoult and two others, casting was done by audition at local schools and colleges, whereas teens in other dramas are often played by babyfaced twentysomethings with more acting experience. The green room they hang out in certainly has the air of a sixth-form common room, with table football, darts, jokily captioned pictures, and a half-read copy of a Philip Pullman book.

As the actors enter, singly or in groups, their good manners are striking. Each one shakes hands and, unlike their counterparts in Skins, they utter not a single swearword. When I throw one into the conversation, they react with shock. They relate to their characters, they say, but they seem considerably less wild. Hoult, Dev Patel (Anwar), 17, and Joe Dempsie (Chris), 20, who don't come from Bristol, have been staying in the local Marriott: while their Skins personas would have drained the mini-bar, seduced the waitresses and been evicted for taking drugs, this lot seem scarcely to have ordered a soft drink. 'We're too tired to do anything much after 12-hour days,' Hoult says.

The programme's non-moralistic take on teenage problems and dilemmas is a source of pride. 'Soaps can't deal with issues properly because they are daytime TV,' says 19-year-old Mike Bailey, who plays Sid. 'I don't know anyone who has stolen a car and crashed into a canal, but I have aspects of Sid in me, everyone has aspects of Sid. He has a good family but he's misunderstood by his dad, and he's so self-conscious that he can't go out without his best friend Tony.'

Other characters appear equally grounded in truth. They may be shy or show-offs, but that's how teenagers are, driven by anxieties about their bodies and their image. They are foolish and reckless, but also scared. They fight against their parents - annoying authority figures - yet love them really. And as they explore themselves and the world, falling in and out of love and trouble, they gradually discover who they are and what they want to do. Some of the scenes are heightened, even over-the-top - this is television after all - but it works because Skins offers an underlying reality.

There has been plenty of drama, less of the essential sensibleness of most teenagers. Adults might expect that if you threw a dozen attractive teenagers together sex would raise its alluring head, but there appear to have been no cast romances. 'None at all,' they say one after another, apparently surprised by the suggestion. When they aren't filming most have been studying for their A-levels. Hannah Murray (Cassie), 18, who is unworldly to the point of not knowing how to use an iPod, managed three As and has just got into Cambridge to read English. Hoult is relatively unusual in having given up the academic chase - he has been filming Coming Down the Mountain, Mark Haddon's story about two brothers, one with Down's syndrome.

Perhaps they are putting up a time-honoured smokescreen of demure behaviour because they are talking to someone of a parental generation, but I don't think so. It's not that they aren't normal teenagers who get drunk and silly, angry and sad, but that this subset of the breed is in the unusual position of having jobs to do. If they perform well, they could be set up for life, so why blow it?

Such is their fledging professionalism that they have pulled off some acutely embarrassing scenes. Bailey, as Sid, was shown masturbating over an Asian Babes magazine, about which his grandmother remarked, mildly, 'From now on you will go to bed wearing boxing gloves.' Dempsie, as Chris, has to run naked through town after a hard night. 'I thought it would be an empty street,' he says, 'but it was the high street, in the rush hour.' Whether they are filmed having sex with umpteen partners or high as kites, they don't blanch.

Mitch Hewer (Maxxie) is straight but he has to play gay snogging scenes. He says it doesn't bother him: 'You've got to be open-minded.' April Pearson (Michelle) laughed when she saw a huge poster next to her school gates that showed her sitting on the loo with her pants and tights around her ankles: 'And I'm the head girl,' she marvels.

The first series has sold to 30 countries and several others are contemplating licensed versions adapted to their own culture. No one is more surprised than the producer/writer Bryan Elsley who, from long experience in television and theatre, says he expected Skins 'to be watched by 250,000 and disappear without trace after one series'.

As he puts together the third series, he reflects that, 'The nice thing is that we've tempted kids back to TV from the internet and computer games. They watch because we tell stories that speak to their lives and that are not moralistic. Most savvy 16-year-olds are beyond a discussion about whether or not to have sex, take drugs or drink. These days kids are subtle in their understanding of family, even when it's dysfunctional, because they have the time and money to reflect on relationships. They don't want drama with a help­line tag at the end of it.'

If he got it more right than he dared hope, it is because he brought together a team of writers with an average age of 22 - and they weren't there only to adjudicate on whether cannabis should be called 'spliff' or 'weed'. Elsley wrote five of the nine episodes in the first series but, as the team grew more experienced, he has increasingly stepped back, providing just three of 10 episodes in series two.

His role is to set the rules and, despite its eagerness to shock, Skins is essentially very old-fashioned. 'My belief is that TV drama has been nervous of boring people so directors create a spurious level of excitement through shaky cameras, flashbacks and zooms. This is a traditional drama. We avoid tricks. We follow a character through sequentially. Writers can only include scenes without the main character if he is just joining or has just left. Beyond those rules, anything goes.'

In the basement of Company Pictures' offices in London, summaries of the plots for series two are scribbled on a white board: 'James and Maxxie meet at a bike-shed', etc. This is the writers' den. But for the bowl of fruit on the table, it could be a student seminar room. This week's essay topic for the four assembled young writers: Does Skins give an accurate picture of teenage life?

Curled up on the sofa is Daniel Kaluuya, 18, who is retaking his A-levels, having turned down drama school to work on Skins, both as writer and actor. He describes himself as coming from a 'normal African background' while his teachers described him as 'a waste of space', although he was writing from the age of nine. Skins is too middle class for his set - 'My boys are not really abiding by the law' - but when given the episode about Jal, the black girl, to write he was keen to avoid cliches. Jal loves music, but it's Mozart that she plays, not soul, and her family are rich. 'Black kids don't sit around talking about being black - that's boring,' he says. 'I introduced her family making pancakes.'

To his right in short dress and hoop earrings is Lucy Kirkwood, 24, from east London. She wrote her first play, Grady Hot Potato, while studying English at Edinburgh. It caught the eye of an agent and her work has now been produced on both sides of the Atlantic. She wasn't a 'massive fan' of the first episode of series one that set the outrageous tone - 'I wish my drug dealer would give me weed on tick… only joking,' - but she knows introductions are hard to get right; also, because Hoult was the only known name, he was assumed to be the hero, not a flawed character. Drafted in for the second series, her mission is to beef up the girls' parts. 'I've been giving them real friendships, like those between the boys.'

Next to her, long legs clutched under his chin, is Jack Thorne who, in between bites of banana, apologises for his advanced age and thinning hair. He's 29, and started writing, he says, as an antidote to the nervousness that leaves his speech littered with 'y'knows': 'I wanted to rewrite the conversations I had during the day and win them.' Already his sensitive portrayals of young people have attracted notice from theatre and television producers and his first feature film, The Scouting Book for Boys, is being shot this year. When he unveiled a lurid drug-and-sex nightmare for his episode about Tony's younger sister Effy (played by Kaya Scodelario, 15) in the first series there was alarm, but it topped the popularity ratings. 'I have a tendency to write dark stuff,' he says.

Jamie Brittain is a commanding presence. He's 22 but he talks about scriptwriting like an old hand, as well he might since the boss figure he refers to as 'Bryan' is his father. 'Bryan asked me what programmes he should be pitching and I told him that I had these characters that I'd been writing about since I was 16. Sid and Tony are the two sides of my character: Sid is the nervous anxious virgin, Tony the nasty scary clever side of me. With Sid, I thought I'd put a version of myself on TV that everyone would love - and then they would love me.'

That grounding in the writers' own fantasies and emotions shows through in the more powerful scenes, such as the devastating rows between Sid and his father, played by Peter Capaldi. 'Don't tell Dad, but it's about our relationship,' Jamie confided to Jack; soon after, Jack was taken aside by Bryan who whispered, 'Don't tell Jamie, but it's about him and me.'

Vulnerable and impulsive, but essentially good and loyal, these are loveable characters - but after this series we won't be seeing much more of them. Skins may be a British rival to Friends but the drama is set in a sixth-form college, so when this lot leave at the end of this year, the focus will switch to the new intake, led by Effy. Soon it's goodbye to Sid, Jal, Maxxie et al. The actors must now go their separate ways. All now have agents. Dev Patel has the lead role in Danny Boyle's Slum Boy Millionaire, but for the rest it's an agonising time of waiting and hoping. Adventures don't always turn out as well in real life as they do in Skins, but emotionally literate, worldly wise contemporary teenagers know that.

Wherever they go next the class of 2008 will look back knowing that they were involved in a groundbreaking experiment. Programme makers have discovered that teenagers will watch television if they are portrayed as rounded human beings. Parents are a little wiser, too. And over coming years, I suspect, Skins will turn out to have been the launchpad for a whole generation of young actors and writers.

'Skins' returns to E4 on February 11 (and on Channel 4 on February 14)